Quick PDA Data Exchange

Trade business cards, swap files, book a date, or even share photos using your PDA's infrared port.

Say you're at an industry event and you meet a prospective client. If your first instinct is to swap business cards, you're in a 20th-century state of mind. It's time to change those instincts, pull out your PDA, and beam your card! All it takes is a few menu taps and a steady hand to keep the PDAs aligned. Every popular PDA these days has an infrared port for beaming information, applications, and records to your contacts and friends. Try it; it's habit-forming. You don't have to restrict beaming to business-related data; you can update family members' PDAs, swap images, and share ideas.

Whenever someone asks you for your business card, you can beam the information from your PDA to that person's device. Your data is instantly recorded in the receiving PDA, eliminating the possibility that your card might be lost. Likewise, don't promise to return to your office and send someone an e-mail about an upcoming meeting; you can beam the details on the spot.

The major PDA operating systemsPalm OS, Microsoft Windows CE, and Symbian's EPOC32provide beaming functions for applications and data using standard menu prompts. From a Palm device's main menu, tap the menu icon and select Beam from the App drop-down menu to view a list of applications installed on your PDA. Any application that appears without a lock icon on this menu can be beamed to another Palm OS device.

You can beam a contact's record from one Pocket PC to another by highlighting the record in the Contacts application, tapping on the Tools menu, and selecting Send via Infrared. The Diamond Mako PDA (which runs the EPOC32 OS) has a hard icon to the left of the screen that initiates infrared send and receive operations between Mako devices.

For PDA operating systems that don't support cross-platform beaming, third-party developers have bridged the gap with infrared transfer applications such as Peacemaker Professional from Conduits Technologies ($14.95 direct, www.conduits.com), and SyncTalk Professional from SoDeog Technologies ($29.95 direct, www.sodeog.com). Both support cross-platform beaming of contacts, appointments, memos, and text files; they also offer free downloads that provide limited functionality. Try some of the following beaming scenarios to develop the habit.

Beam Your Business Card

You can keep your Palm-encoded business card on permanent standby for instant beaming. From the main menu, tap on the Address icon, and then tap on the New button. Enter your business card information and tap Done when the fields are complete. From the main menu of the Address application, tap your business card record to display the Address View screen. Tap the menu icon and then tap Record | Select Business Card. Tap Yes to select your record as the default for the Beam Business Card command.

The next time someone with a Palm device requests your business card, simply turn on both PDAs, align the infrared ports, and hold down the Address button on your Palm device. Once the infrared connection is made, the recipient must tap Yes or No to accept or reject your electronic business card. If the card is accepted, the information goes directly into the receiving Palm's Address database.

Beam Contacts

You can exchange contacts between a Pocket PC and a Palm, simply by installing Conduit's Peacemaker Standard Edition (a free download) on the Pocket PC; no additional application is needed on the Palm.

On the Pocket PC's Contact List screen, highlight all the records you wish to beam. Tap Beam Selected in the Tools menu. The Peacemaker application launches, with your selected contacts listed in the Contacts Ready for Beaming window. Align the infrared ports on the PDAs and tap the Send Contacts button. Once the transmission is complete, the Palm screen will display a box with Yes and No buttons for accepting or rejecting the records.

With the Peacemaker application open on the Pocket PC, you can select a single contact record to beam from the Palm. (Note that in this direction, contacts must be beamed one at a time.) When the record is received on the Pocket PC, a menu window pops up and asks whether you want to import the record. When you accept the import, the record is sent to Pocket Outlook. A confirmation message displays when the record has been successfully entered.

Beam a Spreadsheet

With a few screen taps, you can beam a Pocket Excel spreadsheet from one Pocket PC to another. On the sending PDA, tap Programs and open Pocket Excel. From the file list screen, tap the spreadsheet name to open the file. From the Tools menu, tap Send via Infrared.

On the receiving Pocket PC, open Pocket Excel. From the File List screen, open the Tools menu and tap on Receive via Infrared. The Infrared Transmission screen appears on both devices with messages confirming the connection and the successful file transmission.

Beam An Appointment

With SyncTalk Professional installed on a Pocket PC and the free trial version on a Palm PDA, you can beam records between the Palm's Date Book and the Pocket PC's Calendar applications. To beam an appointment from a Pocket PC to a Palm, open SyncTalk Professional on the Pocket PC and tap on View |Appointments. Scroll to the appointment you want to beam. On the Palm, open the SyncTalk application to any screen. On the Pocket PC, tap Tools and then Send. Once the appointment record has been successfully transferred, tap the Accept button on the Palm screen to enter it in the Date Book application.

Beam a Document

With Documents To Go Professional Edition, from DataViz ($49.95 direct, www.dataviz.com), installed on one Palm device, you can beam a word processing document to another Palm PDA for viewing and editing.

From Documents To Go's main menu, tap the menu icon and select Beam Application and Document from the drop-down menu under Record. Align the two devices' infrared ports to transfer the application's word processing component, Word To Go. The recipient must tap Yes to accept the application. The sender is then prompted to beam the document, and the recipient must confirm acceptance of the document in Word To Go. In this scenario, the document can be edited on the receiving PDA. It cannot be beamed or uploaded from the receiving PDA to a PC, though.

With Documents To Go Professional Edition installed on two Palm PDAs, you can beam documents back and forth and upload them from either device.

Beam Photos

Album To Go, from Club Photo (www.clubphoto.com), is a free download that installs desktop and Palm applications for managing and viewing digital images. It works in monochrome or color, depending on the capability of your Palm device. You can beam the applications and selected images to other Palm users via an infrared link.

First, beam the Album To Go application. From your Palm's application screen, tap the menu icon and select Beam from the App drop-down menu. Highlight Album To Go and tap the Beam button. Once the application is successfully installed on the recipient's Palm, open Album To Go on your Palm. Tap the beaming icon in the lower-left corner of the screen, and then tap the name of the image you want to beam from the file list. The image automatically loads into the recipient's Palm and displays in the Album To Go file list, ready for viewing. You must have the same version of Album To Go installed on the sending and receiving devices in order to transfer photos.

Bruce Brown, a PC Magazine Contributing Editor, is a former truck driver, aerobics instructor, high school English teacher, therapist, and adjunct professor (gypsy) in three different fields (Computing, Counseling, and Education) in the graduate departments of three different colleges and universities (Wesleyan University , St. Joseph College, and the University of Hartford). In the fall of 1981 he was bitten by the potentials of personal computing and conspired to leave the legitimacy of academia for a life absorbed in computer stuff. In the fall of 1982...
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Marge Brown, a PC Magazine Contributing Editor, has worked in the technology field for twenty years, as Director of Technology at The Travelers Companies, as an independent Managed Health Care technology consultant, and as owner of Brown Consulting Associates, the family's freelance technology writing business.
Since 1998, Marge has worked on a full-time basis with her husband, Bruce Brown, also a PC Magazine Contributing Editor, writing reviews for PC Magazine and analytical articles for ExtremeTech.com.
Marge is the mother of Rich Brown, freelance writer, Liz Brown, employee...
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